


Run You Faster

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Biting, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Power Dynamics, Rough Sex, Size Difference, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, a power dynamic which does not really allow for meaningful consent, extended canine metaphor, watch these weird-looking space nazis take out their issues on each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 01:47:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: In the aftermath of Crait, Hux is licking his wounds and cutting his losses, trying to work out what to do about the New Supreme Leader. So is Kylo Ren.(Two unrepentant mass-murderers bleed their issues all over each other. In space.)





	Run You Faster

**Author's Note:**

> _Could it be that you need me_  
>  To keep you out, to run you faster  
> Promise me you'll let me be  
> The one, the worst of all your enemies  
> Pretending you're a friend to me  
> Say that we'll be nemeses  
> \- _Nemeses_ , Jonathan Coulton

Below the window of the command craft, Crait is white and red and ragged, still smoking. So is Hux.

Collar open, his throat is unmarked by anything other than a few days’ sleepless stubble, but every drag on his thin cigarra burns on the way down, and there is,

“Significant bruising, sir. To the majority of the upper respiratory tract. Two cracked ribs. Acute laryngitis, most likely the result of, ah,...injury…” the medtech’s voice quavers and trails off under Hux’s flat regard. “You really shouldn’t smoke.” he finishes lamely.

“Dismissed” Hux rasps, harshly sibilant and barely audible. It tastes like ash.

Crait is red and white and smoking. Hux is red and white and smoking. Hux is rolling all his hurt and hate into a tight ball under his ribs, and he is going to keep it there and shove it down Ren’s throat instead one day. Hux has not slept, has not been sleeping since Starkiller. But they keep the stim shots in the same place in every medbay office he’s ever been in, and it’s not like they can keep the clearance codes from _him_.

He shoves the waistband of his trousers down and jabs a syringe into the meat of his thigh, waits until the familiar buzz settles in his limbs. Assesses. He can barely speak, and his back is screaming somewhere far away, so Hux calculates he has...two hours, give or take, before he’ll need to go roll over and wag his tail and show Ren what a good dog he can be.

Giving Ren what he wants isn’t going to keep him safe, of course, but that’s not the point. It’s only a matter of buying enough time to survive to the next beating, and the next, until he can finally shove a vibroblade through the man’s dark, wet cow eyes. The familiar calculus of injury. Hux tells himself he’s taken beatings from worse than Ren, and tastes the lie on the backs of his teeth.

Because Ren is Ren, he gets twenty minutes.

 

—————————

 

_Supreme Leader._

Hux hurls the thought at Ren, so he won’t have to say it out loud. Ren blinks at him, in his infuriatingly languid fashion, and smirks.

“I thought you disapproved of the use of _Force mysticism_ for communication purposes. General.”

He feels Ren rifling ungently through his mind like a man looting a corpse.

Hux’s thoughts are uncharacteristically scattered, red-edged and wandering between petty schemes and past beatings, but very clearly, Ren catches _If you plan on killing me, could you wait for at least tw‒_

“Two months?”

_The nearest‒_

_“_ Say it.”

(Usually Hux would be trying to place his accent again, sneering at the hardened, dentalized stops, the oddly lilting  cadence. This is a thing Hux does, disdainfully, which he is not doing now, and the lack is...noticeable. Ren frowns.)

Hux grinds the edge of one palm into the base of his throat to force the sound out and croaks “The nearest officer with an equivalent rank is General Kou on the _Vindicator_. Three, maybe f _‒_ ” his voice breaks, and Hux clears his throat with an ugly, pained noise before continuing. “Four days away, if they have the fuel to sustain lightspeed jumps. Need to arrange staff transfers. Update clearances.” Ren leans back in his chair, eyes closed, feeling Hux forget he’s meant to be groveling. “See if she,” he swallows, “ _survives_ you. General Anchises on the _Severine_ would be the next closest, if she doesn’t.”

“So little faith in your own command staff _here_ , general. Didn’t you pick them out yourself?”

_They kn‒_

_“_ Out loud, general.” He opens his eyes to watch as Hux curls his lip, teeth gleaming white and feral.

“They know you. Nobody wants the job.” He falls into a painful parade rest.

“You do.”

_Yes._

Hux wants the job, Hux wants the galaxy, Hux wants to pistol-whip Ren out of his _fucking_ chair, which he will not allow himself to think of as a throne.

“Go on, General. Do it.” He snaps Hux’s greatcoat away from his blaster with an indulgent gesture. The room is fogged thick with Hux’s sudden, cold terror at even this faint touch of the Force, but. But his chapped, spidery hand twitches towards the holster anyway, like he can’t stop himself. Like a dog, snapping at his own fear. Hux wants to bite it out of himself, follow it up with Ren’s throat, and Ren...

Ren wants Hux, like something there isn’t a metaphor to suit.

Hux is not an especially attractive man; fishbelly pale, jaw pulled down at the corners from his perpetual sneer, skinny  and sharp, with the oddly attenuated limbs of someone who’s spent in too long in shipboard artificial gravity. Hux is not a trustworthy man, Hux is a mean-spirited, petty, little fascist, and Ren is struck by the wild, sudden urge to lure Snoke's rabid cur in close, let him sniff his knuckles until he allowed himself to be petted, and unleash him brutally on everyone else.

(Hux used to think about _him_ this way, too.)

Unconsciously, Ren sinks lower in his chair, thighs splaying just a little wider. There is something hot and all-consuming about Hux’s attention; the thought of having it all to himself is dizzying. Hux’s hands are slashes of salt-white against the black uniform, and in the dim light of Ren’s quarters, the effect is almost painterly, abstract. Hux’s voice cracks faintly at the edges of his awareness, and Ren makes up his mind.

"General. I can’t hear you.”

Hux’s expression is _incredible._ Like a human sneer, it takes over his whole body. Even his coat bares its teeth. It lasts for a split second, before Hux snaps in on himself, twisting it into a thin, cowed quirk of the mouth which only faintly resembles a smile. “I apologize. Supreme Leader.”

“What was that? Come closer.”

Hux walks heavily, bringing his heels down like he expects to hear the precise _click_ of boots on durasteel. So Ren snuffs the sound out.

And he postures at deafness, ordering Hux closer one step at time, watching his neck flush, watching his eyelid twitch until:

_I know you can hear me, I don’t need to be in your fucking lap for this._

He is, too. Hux is holding his parade rest like it’s the only thing keeping him upright, standing so close that he’s nearly tripped over Ren’s knees.

“Would you like to be?” Ren smirks. “Do you think I’ll let you keep your precious command if you bend over for me?”

“Will you?”

And Hux must read something that says he just might, because  he opens his uniform jacket, and leans in. He plants a knee on either side of his, bracing one hand on Ren’s shoulder while he tugs his shirt untucked with the other. His hands are shaking. His coat is still on, and in the way, and it’s

Not what Ren wants. Hux is stiff, except for when he forces himself not to flinch under Ren’s hand; he won’t _look_ , like he used to, not even when Ren pushes his chest out; he lets Ren shove his trousers halfway down his thighs without even thinking about trying to choke him with the belt.

 “Hardly a stirring performance, General. I’d’ve thought you’d be better at this.”

Nothing. Hux just rocks the heel of his palm between Ren’s legs, mechanically.

“Poor Hux.” He tries, wetting his lips with the  lip of his tongue “You’re afraid.”

His hand stills, and Hux sits back on his heels, eyebrows raised. Better.

_Were you hoping I wouldn’t be? You killed three officers the week I met you, and you broke two of my fucking ribs **today**. Was I meant to be the one person you didn’t scare? Were we going to be **friends**?_

He knows, he _knows_ it’s going to hurt him to let Hux have this, and he shouldn’t, he can’t stop from snapping “I don’t need friends”. Can’t stop the way his lower lip pushes out too far to be called anything but a pout.

“Poor Ren. You must be so _lonely._ ” Hux sneers.

Finally.

Ren presses his thumb _hard_ into the needle mark he finds on Hux’s thigh for no other reason than it must be tender still, kneading the swell of Hux’s ass with his other hand. Ren lets his fingers wander, only to be cut off by Hux’s nails clawing hard at his wrist.

“Don’t you _fucking_ dare” he breathes, teeth scraping the meat of Ren’s neck.

It doesn’t _sound_ like an order, so he tries again, cupping his hand around Hux’s ( _flat_ , his mind supplies, _miniscule, **and** he’s cold,_ ) ass, stretching the tip of his longest finger brushes _‒_

Hux rears back, sputtering, or trying to, at least. What comes out is more of a gagging cough, an almost feverish noise in combination with the blotchy flush high on his cheeks.

But he looks like he _wants_ to sputter, so Ren obliges, pushing his knuckles into the divot between Hux’s collarbones until he can hiss:

“I didn’t exactly wake up anticipating your cock up my arse today.” There is a choked gap at the end of it. Not “Supreme Leader”. Not “Ren”.

The black gulf of  a failure, of a _you fucked up, **Ben**_ , yawns before him, dizzying,  but. But Hux is still there, and his teeth are put away. But Hux’s pulse flutters under his palm, and his narrow thighs slot so neatly on either side of Ren’s waist, so he pushes on, leans forward until his lips _just_ brush Hux’s own with every bitten-off syllable.

“I understand. It must be difficult for you, with the stick in the way. How long do you need to take it out?”

Hux surges forward, crashing into Ren’s mouth with all the finesse of an explosion, catches Ren’s bottom lip between his teeth, worrying at it until it bleeds, like Hux’s own split-open mouth is bleeding, like the roots of Ren’s hair are bleeding at the nape of his neck where it feels like Hux is trying to pull the back of his spine out through his neck by twisting and yanking on a fistful of dark curls, erratic little beads of red welling up on his scalp just  like the _something_ welling up in the pit of Ren’s stomach in time with the erratic little beats of Hux’s stuttering red hips.

It remains unclear whether this is Hux’s bid to keep his post, or simply an attempt to eat Ren alive.

“Feral.” He goads, “ You know Snoke used to call you _‒_ ”

“I’m aware.” Hux murmurs wetly into Ren’s shoulder, head bowed and smearing... _something_ onto Ren’s arm. Tears or his blood or Ren’s blood, and Hux thinks: _Better a rabid cur than Brendol’s bitch whelp._

He plucks it from Hux’s steel trap of a brain before it gets caught, and Hux glares up at him from around a mouthful of Ren’s bicep. “That wasn’t for for you. Mind your _fucking_ business.”

The thing is, is that Hux knows when Ren is in his head, which allows him a degree of control of what Ren can take out of it, but Ren knows that Hux knows when he’s in his head, which allows _him_ to get around that, but Hux knows that Ren knows that he knows…

It’s an ugly recursion at the heart of their relationship, these double-tracked conversations where Hux says one thing and thinks something else for Ren to overhear, which, he realizes, have always been like trying to pet a wild animal, because there never was any telling when Hux would play this game with him, and when he would turn and snap Ren out of his head. Always _thoughts,_ never feelings. Hux is thinking of the thin little knife strapped to his arm, and also of Ren throwing him into the wall. He is thinking of flexing his wrist and driving it in behind one of Ren’s ears, which he thinks are easy targets, absurd, and he is thinking of  the weight Ren’s palm spread across his back and much of his back it spans, and how it would feel to have his spine broken.

But Hux is saying “ _Get.Out._ ” He is shaking.

 “You’re acting like you’re not afraid of me. But you are. And you’re telling yourself you aren’t afraid of _me_ , just the things I could do. But it’s the same thing.”

“No. It isn’t.” Hux whispers. His hands are steady.

Outside, invisible in Ren’s half-lit room, Crait is red and white and smoking, and inside, there is a series of sounds, one at a time: the soft squeak of leather as Ren’s gloved fist clenches shut and Hux’s neck arches like a throttled bird. Then Hux’s choked wheeze, as he is bent back, wet-eyed and begging but thinking _do better_. Ren, panting, carpals cold and aching. Hux’s rattling breath as Ren uncurls his fingers, then the soft click of his teeth when he snaps, almost playfully, at Ren’s hand coming up to stroke at his throat.

Hux is thinking _‒_

“I’m not interested in the details of whatever _childhood traumas_ made you like this.” Ren snarls, raking over Hux’s back (the heavy fabric-slapping of Hux’s coat, still draped over his back, still in the way), shoving both shirt and undershirt up under his arms.

“Yes you are.” Hux snarls back. He’s lost weight. It shows.

Outside, Crait is red and white and smoking.

Inside, it’s quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> Spot the secret lyric and or/ Sailor Moon reference to win a prize™!
> 
> Hit me up on [tumblr](thefaustaesthetic.tumblr.com)!


End file.
